


only pretending to be invisible

by gointorosedale



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 22:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/667426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gointorosedale/pseuds/gointorosedale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's how it goes: John has a heart and it hurts.</p><p>      It wasn't until after<br/>      I poured the second cup <br/>      that I realised <br/>      I was alone.</p><p>      Tea for Two (A Tragedy) by Pamela August Russel</p>
            </blockquote>





	only pretending to be invisible

**only pretending to be invisible  
(like the rest of us)**

   
Here's how it goes. 

You make tea. You're English, it's what you do. You've always made tea, and there's something terribly soothing in the ritual of it, the sound of mugs clinking together and the smell, the heat radiating from the cup. When you come back from a case together, high on adrenalin and the chase and the rush of blood through your ears, of success, you make tea. When you come back and the heavy silence of regret presses against your chest and constricts your throat, you also make tea. When you wake up at four in the morning with desert sand burning in your throat and you can hear him downstairs, turning pages in a book or playing the violin softly, you get out of bed and you make tea. Always two cups.

Whatever has happened, you head to the kitchen and you put the kettle on and listen to Sherlock bustling around behind you, hanging his coat on the coat rack, shoving aside the endless stacks of paper that permanently take up residence on your sofa during cases. Sound. Movement. Life.

Then, of course, then blood and the dull thump of a body on pavement and his hand, it had reached out to keep you from getting closer at first, but then it had simply reached out.

–

Here's how it goes.

You make tea. Different flat, different neighbourhood, no background noise but you barely hear anything these days. You do all the usual things, clear off the kitchen counter, put the kettle on. You reach up and open the kitchen cabinet and that's where this version diverges.

Sometimes you'll reach out to grab two mugs and then you freeze and realize and feel the breath knocked out of you, sharp and sudden, like a punch in the gut. You stand like that, those times, for a few minutes and sometimes slide down to the floor and sit there and feel and try not to, simply doing that until the tea has turned cold and your skin pricks like a thousand needles.

Sometimes you've already poured your tea, and you're looking at the two mugs thinking nothing at all and standing still and sometimes you smash the second one against the wall, but then you feel horribly guilty for breaking his mug and you carefully gather the shards and you can feel the tears burning behind your eyes and you want to howl, can feel the very wrongness of this situation, the empty space left behind in Sherlock's wake a physical thing.

Sometimes you've already finished making the tea and you shout _Sherlock, tea!_ and in the silence you think you can almost hear the words echoing back to you, and then you shudder so hard you feel it down to your bones and you want to take the words back but you're John Watson and so you straighten your back and sit down on the sofa with your one cup of tea and you stare straight at it like you're issuing a challenge.

None of these things make you feel any better.

–

Days are quiet, like that.

–

Lestrade comes around sometimes. You used to get together for drinks before, and isn't it funny how everything is divided in before and after these days? But you and Greg, you used to go out for drinks together. You'd bitch about Sherlock, about the latest fingers in the bread bin and the violin at four AM when you start work at seven. You'd have a few beers, make fun of each other's greying hairs and share work related gossip and you'd feel perfectly ordinary, such a contrast to being in Sherlock's company.

Nowadays, you meet at your new flat. It's a quiet place and when the doorbell rings you jump and when you open it, Greg, looking as tired as you feel, his normally looming frame not quite as impressive with his rumpled shirt and bruised, weary eyes.

You let him in wordlessly and for a moment, as he moves past you, you want to sag against him. There's something wonderfully paternal about Greg and just for a moment you want to fall against his shoulder and close your eyes and then you think of the last time you touched another person and then you swallow heavily and the thought of human contact is awful, makes your skin itch.

You go to the kitchen and make coffee.

–

For three years you don't touch the kettle. Avert your eyes when you're in the kitchen.

Well, it's a life.

–

Greg talks about Sherlock exactly once. _I was s'posed to have saved him,_ he says, _he was off the drugs_ like it makes any difference to you whether Sherlock died of an overdose because he was bored, or threw himself off a rooftop. Like the outcome isn't exactly the same, isn't that you want to scream and tear out your own throat and that your breath sometimes catches when you wake up in the middle of the night and that Sherlock's dead, _dead._

–

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Three years later, you make tea again for the first time. When you see him again, the first thing you do is freeze, and blink slowly exactly twice and then you punch him in the face and he laughs and clutches his nose, and then you lean over and wrap you arms around his shoulders so tightly they hurt, the kind of holding that is painful, that aches down to your bones and covers your senses so entirely that there's nothing but the other person and you can feel his clavicle pressing against your chest and the dig of his spine against your hand and he needs to eat more, so very thin but that's so very inconsequential because Sherlock is here, is _home_ and neither of you let go for a very long time, every time you contemplate the idea you simply hold on tighter.

When you do finally let go, might be hours later, you go to the kitchen in a place that has never been home to you before and Sherlock follows you, grinning widely, knowing he'll have to explain himself but knowing it'll have to wait until after tea, as well. He watches you with bright eyes while you put the kettle on, and you turn to look at him for a moment. Your face softens into a smile and it feels unfamiliar and strange and perfect, like rediscovering something you thought you'd lost.

You stare at him for another moment, searching his face. There are lines around his eyes that weren't there before, and his lips are a bit cracked and his hair is longer than you remember, but it's him and he's smiling.

You take a steadying breath, open the kitchen cabinets. For the first time in three years you take out the tea.)


End file.
